Cobija, Then and Now

There’s no post-1988 data for Cobija or Rurrenabaque.

Thus spaketh Tamino, a pseudonymous climate blogger who occasionally takes the time to hurl invective at Climate Audit.

As so often in matters climate, I casually wondered how Tamino knew this. My puzzlement grew by merely googling “cobija weather”. To my enormous surprise, there were a number of websites that purported to give up-to-the-hour information on weather in Cobija, where as I write, it is 29 deg C. with wind from the NNW at 6 mph.

In the past, we here at Climate Audit have assisted UCAR in locating the missing civilization of Chile. Perhaps today we can do NASA a good turn by locating the mysterious lost city of Cobija, Bolivia.

According to Wikipedia, Cobija has approximately 25,000 inhabitants, is the seat of a university and has two airports. So it is indeed puzzling that there is apparently no data after 1988.

Googling “cobija climate”, I promptly located a site which contained not merely today’s data for Cobija but information going from 1973 to the present without interruption, neatly arranged in annual tables. The mystery deepened.

This site contained an identification number “850410”. Using the first 5 digits and the name, I searched for possible sources of the mysterious data available on the internet, but which the GHCN historical network and NASA had been unable to locate. This turned up many lists.

Collecting myself from my astonishment, I thought for a minute about the seeming easy availability of the data for commercial services on the internet and I wondered whether it might be located on one of the primary daily lists (GHCN Daily) http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/ghcnd-stations.txt and sure enough Cobija and several Bolivian cities were listed. Indeed, they turned out to be sites selected for inclusion in the GCOS (GSN) network!

I did the same thing for Rurrenabaque, another site said by Tamino (relying on NASA) to have no values after 1988. The comparison is shown below.

Black – NASA; red – GSN

During the period of overlap between the GISS dset1 record and the GSN record (1973 on), the GISS version increases at about 0.6 deg C per decade relative to monthly averages calculated directly from GSN daily information as shown below.

What accounts for the relative increase in the GISS version relative to the GSN version? At present, I don’t know. The primary cause is not at the GISS level, as the GISS version is closely related to the GHCN Raw version. The difference appears to be in how GHCN Monthly handles the original data – a topic that we’ve not even scratched yet.

The GISS dset0 file contains three Cobija versions which presumably derive form GHCN somewhere: one goes from 1951-81, one from 1956 to 1989 – both having very long gaps in the 1960s and 1970s and a third version from 1956 to 1989. In some portions, the versions are virtually identical; in other portions, major discrepancies arise. The differences between the three versions is shown below:

So we’ve solved one mystery and encountered others. We’ve established that Cobija (and Rurrenabaque) both have data after 1988. Indeed, the data is collected and stored at the GHCN Daily site. Unfortunately, in this case, the left literally doesn’t seem to know what the right hand is doing as the GHCN Monthly site has failed to link to the updates occurring at the GHCN Daily site.

Tamino says that climate scientists are aware of these problems and “working hard” to resolve them.

“a test for six species using tree ring analysis for Bertholletia, Cedrelinga and Peltogyne we used the available precipitation data from Riberalta that span the period from 1941 to 2001. For Tachigali the same precipitation data were used, but the chronology only covered the period from 1975 to 2001, because rings near the centre of the discs were not clearly distinguishable. For Cedrela and Amburana we used the rainfall data from Cobija over the period from 1951 to 1981.”

Well now we see why there is no post 1988 data, the hockey stick turned into a boomerang. Can’t have that.
Steve: No, it just looks like failure to collect the data. There are other countries and data sets that end around hte same time.

I have noticed a pattern of behavior. When StMac gets on the
trail of something interesting…. The proxy warriers are called in. Web site changes happen,
ftp sites change, new faces appear here. It’s rather funny. Nothing can be concluded from this.

Just curious, but Tamino’s chart showing the trend lines and explanation of how non-rural sites need to be adjusted to local rural sites was interesting. So the southern hemisphere has negative UHI indexes and clockwise rotation toilets. That could make a good youtube video tutorial.

Tamino is continuing to deny that there is any data for these sites after 1988. In an inline comment at about 3:50 pm Eastern (R Clark // February 27, 2008 at 8:50 pm – blig time )

OK now i’m confused.
Is there or is there not temp data for Cobija and Rurrenabaque after 1988? (as posted over at CA)
Not trying to take any side here just losing faith on what to believe.

[Response: I downloaded both the raw and adjusted datasets from GISS, and there’s no data beyond April 1989. ]

Memo to: Tamino. Just because GISS doesn’t have the data doesn’t mean that there’s no data. It only means that, after 20 years of “working hard”, GISS hasn’t collected the data. See http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/Cobija/850410.htm for a convenient source. The data itself appears to originate at the GSN network which is available from NOAA as described in my post above.

Shat’s the over/under on how long it will take for Tamino to admit that there is data for these sites after 1988?

I have noticed a pattern of behavior. When StMac gets on the
trail of something interesting…. The proxy warriers are called in. Web site changes happen,
ftp sites change, new faces appear here. It’s rather funny. Nothing can be concluded from this.

Almost like this?:

Down, but not Out!
A week ago we experienced a terrorist-like Denial of Service Attack on our website that rendered it inaccessible to patrons. Unfortunately, the company that managed our website was unable to stop the attack, and we had to make the decision to host our website elsewhere. Moving our website to another server is not a simple task and must take place in stages. For now, only the current weekly issue of CO2 Science will be accessible, followed by a gradual return to full website access and functionality in the coming days and weeks.

For those of you awaiting the release of our DVD Carbon Dioxide and the Climate Crisis, which was advertised on our website shortly before the attack began, that wait will continue for an undetermined amount of time. We apologize for the inconveniences caused by the website attack and our subsequent server move. We hope you will continue to support our efforts and visit us often.

The current analysis uses surface air temperatures measurements from the following data sets: the unadjusted data of the Global Historical Climatology Network (Peterson and Vose, 1997 and 1998), United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) records through 2005, and SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) data from Antarctic stations. The basic analysis method is described by Hansen et al. (1999), with several modifications described by Hansen et al. (2001) also included. The GISS analysis is updated monthly.

The Cobija data that Steve located is GHCN data. The station identifier (850410) is the same one that GISS uses:

GISS Surface Temperature Analysis
Station List Search: (8.3 S,67.5 W)
Stations are ordered by distance from center at (8.3 S,67.5 W). Click the “(*)” next to a station name and the list will be re-sorted by distance from that station.

i am confused. so if someone cliamed that there was no GISS temperature data in the tiny village i live in, he would be wrong because i am recording the data in my own private notebook/blog?

do you think that GISS should adjust data by using non-GISS datasets?

I’m confused. I thought that GISS was only a data analysis centre, they collected not raw data themselves, only data vouched for by either the gov’t or by peer reviewed scientific publications. Do they really know which end of a max-min thermometer should be up?

i am confused. so if someone cliamed that there was no GISS temperature data in the tiny village i live in, he would be wrong because i am recording the data in my own private notebook/blog?

The data Steve found isn’t just some sod collecting data in his personal notebook. It’s official data from an official station made available through official channels. It’s a site GISS was clearly aware of– since they adjusted the data.

re 18. Nothing can be concluded. There were other odd occurances. Other things I noticed.
Odd little things. I choose to not mention them. It’s really all rather silly. If Gisstemp were fully documented, then we would be arguing about 5% of the matter. It would be an academic debate: full of rancor without much import. As it stands we may have a different debate: Full of rancor with Giss reputations at stake. Or not.

A small clarification — it looks like GHCN lost track of the data between its daily and monthly data sets. Does anyone know of a _valid_ reason why it would be included in the daily but not the monthly?

Steve, why don’t you just make your own study? Go and collect the data and devise your own system to measure global temp. It’s actually the only genuine way to show GISStemp is wrong, everything else is spin.

I have noticed a pattern of behavior. When StMac gets on the
trail of something interesting…. The proxy warriers are called in. Web site changes happen,
ftp sites change, new faces appear here. It’s rather funny. Nothing can be concluded from this.

Mosh, with your track record on guessing identities, I wouldn’t trust your intuition on this. 🙂

Just curious, but Tamino’s chart showing the trend lines and explanation of how non-rural sites need to be adjusted to local rural sites was interesting. So the southern hemisphere has negative UHI indexes and clockwise rotation toilets.

And the advertisement for “An Inconvemient Truth” showed a clockwise rotation huricane. Maybe that just goes with the subject matter.

Well, I’ve been out playing squash and come back and checked in to see whether Tamino has conceded the obvious point that there is data for Cobija after 1988. He continues to deny the obvious. It’s fun to watch,, At some point, you’d think that the Team would learn to concede unwinnable points. Here’s a sample:

Dear Tamino,

I know you insist that “[t]here’s no data from Cobija or Rurrenabaque”, But McIntyre has posted the post 1988 temperature data for Cobija and Rurrenabaque at Climate Audit today.

Why the discrepancy?

Regards,

WJR

[Response: He didn’t get it from GHCN or from NASA. Does it include adjustments for station moves, time-of-observation, instrument changes? Does Anthony Watts have photographs?]

I look at the graph and see a decreasing temp from 1977-1982, then an increase from 1982-1984. At 1985 the temperature drops and starts to rise again. The graph looks somewhat likes a saw-tooth plot. Why does everbody always want to plot a trend line? Maybe that is the way temperature cycles at this site.

Here is an example of step change at the Quatsino BC weather station. The data are summary of multidecadal analysis of min temp for the Fall Equinox Interval (FEI, Sept 16-26) and are reported as min temp +/- AD (where AD is the classical average deviation):

1900-1929 280.5 +/- 1.5 K

1930-1989 281.8 +/- 1.5 K

1990-2005 283.1 +/- 1.5 K

The temperature jump of 1.3 K between the intervals is for real. I compared the yearly means for each decade on either side of the jump point by the t-test and the means are significantly different ( i.e., p is less than 0.05). Note the long intervals of constant temperature. The first two are longer than the PDO cycle. Note the constant AD. The average value for the decades from 1900 thru 2000 is 1.5 +/-0.1 K. For the whole century the change is a whopping 2.6 K, but this was found only for the FEI.

I have to do multi-decadal analysis for the Max Temp for the FEI. If these calculation confirm the temperature jump, then maybe I have discovered some undetected ocean cycle.

When I finish these calculations, I shall report the result here. So stay tuned.

This is a critical example of the logic of adjustments. It does not matter if it’s in Peru. Tamino says it is data and can’t be killed, so the negative slope has to be corrected to a positive slope because that’s what the comparison towns do. The obvious question is, why not the reverse procedure?

Scientifically, unless you know the cause, you should not fiddle.

Then when later data came from CA, the correction did not extend past the hinge point at the end of the (then) availavailable data in 1988. Next, Tamino lectures us on how unscientific CA is.

Strange, but not funny.

What is funny is the marketing opportunity for we who live in the Southern hemisphere. See george @ 32 and the quote from CaptDallas2

Just curious, but Tamino’s chart showing the trend lines and explanation of how non-rural sites need to be adjusted to local rural sites was interesting. So the southern hemisphere has negative UHI indexes and clockwise rotation toilets.

In the Southern hemisphere I have never seen a rotation toilet. Can I have a plan of one please? Has it anything to do with the non-mathematical expression “… hitting the fan”?

Steve, why don’t you stop complaining and do the research yourself. If it’s so bad that it needs to be done, just do it/
This constant whining is no more than spin. Why don’t you do something constructive and create an alternative toi GISStemp.

Rotation referring to direction of water swirl. Urban myth in the US is that
NH toilets swirl water one way and Aussie toilets swirl the other direction
because, duh, they’re in a different hemisphere. Obviously water swirl is
done via the angle the water is injected into the bowl. Funny myth though.

GISS are paid by the US taxpayer to look after this data. Steve M is a Canadian and so is not. I’m sure Steve wouldn’t mind being funded by the US taxpayer to do this job as it appears that he’s now doing it for free anyway. I wouldn’t mind doing the same for HADCRUT but I’m blowed if I’m going to do it for free when I’m also paying for Phil Jones to do it.

What is most significant here is that it is the very same people who are negelecting to update this data when it shows clear signs that the claimed warming trend doesn’t exist or has reversed who are developing the GCMs that rely on completly non-verifiable water vapour postive feedback effects to claim that we are approaching a ‘tipping point’ in climate change due to man’s use of fossil fuels.

I’d agree with your point that we need someone independent to manage this data and to derive the global temperature anomaly (for what its worth) but I’m buggered as a UK taxpayer if I’m going to have to pay for this job to be done twice. I’m sure most US taxayers feel the same.

Why don’t you do something constructive and create an alternative toi GISStemp.

Nathan, could it perhaps also be that the GISStemp methods are very interesting phenomena in themselves, and are possibly also being revealed here in certain respects as examples of how not to do climate science, thus advancing the science?

John V and others,
data recorded in the daily data set come from the three-hourly synop messages and from the METAR reports. The Tmax and Tmin are, therefore, the maximum and minimum value of all those readings (included the daytime Tmax (for Europe 06-18 UTC) and nightime (18-06) Tmin).
In the monthly data set, for climatological purpouse, you find the actual extremes in a 24 hours period, coming from a daily climatological report which you can find quickly for GCOS stations.
Number of GCOS stations is very limited: for istance in Italy there are one hundred stations with daily values, but only 4 of them belong to the GCOS network.
In the GHCN and GISS data sets almost all italian stations are not updated but data, definitely, exist. And in real time!
For istance, here you can find at 08:00 UTC the climate daily report from Milan of the previous day and, changing the ICAO, also for the others 100 stations. And all this daily, from your home PC!

The above is from tamino, who says all data should be saved not killed; but because one station has a negative trend it should be adjusted by those positive trends around it. Why not take a simple average? Why not presume that the two stations with positive trends are wrong?

He goes on to say that a hinge pont was chosen near the end of the data and adjustments were made up to there. But now that CA has shown later data, why should the hinge point remain where it is, or at all? The whole exercise is flawed logic in a nutshell.

I look at the graph and see a decreasing temp from 1977-1982, then an increase from 1982-1984. At 1985 the temperature drops and starts to rise again. The graph looks somewhat likes a saw-tooth plot. Why does everbody always want to plot a trend line? Maybe that is the way temperature cycles at this site.

Casual inspection of the data Steve plotted raised the question of frequency content. There’s an interesting frequency plot in a climate presentation here:

As shown by Ascher Shapiro in a 1961 educational video (Vorticity, Part 1), this effect can indeed reveal the influence of the Coriolis force on drain direction, but only under carefully controlled laboratory conditions. In a large, circular, symmetrical container (ideally over 1m in diameter and conical), still water (whose motion is so little that over the course of a day, displacements are small compared to the size of the container) escaping through a very small hole, will drain in a cyclonic fashion: counterclockwise in the Northern hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern hemisphere—the same direction as the Earth rotates with respect to the corresponding pole.

The way data is collected, recorded, and adjusted is the most convoluted mess I’ve ever seen. They acutally use 20 yr old data to adjust current data. They stop collecting data in 1988 then try to tell us what the temp will be in 2050. [snip]

I’ve been in manufacturing for 35 yrs. There would be alot of climate scientists looking for work tomorrow if they were held to private industry standards.

Steve, why don’t you stop complaining and do the research yourself. If it’s so bad that it needs to be done, just do it/ This constant whining is no more than spin. Why don’t you do something constructive and create an alternative toi GISStemp.

There’s a difference between an audit or checking and doing a complete study. Checking to see if Hansen observe his own definition of “rural” by checking a few stations is something that would have been done had these been financial statements being sent out to the public, prior to them being sent out. We know that this wasn’t done by the peer reviewers of Hansen’s original article.

NASA says that it has a peer review system for data being disseminate by NASA, but this seems to have eluded the NASA peer reviewers.

I’m simply making an observation here that should ideally have been made by one of the peer reviewers or by professionals in the field.

It might be worth submitting a letter to NASA or a comment to the journal, but I’m hardly in a position to re-do the analysis from first principles as a one-man unfunded job, nor is it a job that I would wish to do or manage at this stage of my life.

I do not exclude the possibility that properly chosen stations according to the most meticulous criteria may show results that are quite similar to ones from the present dog’s breakfast.

#47 Sherington, wasn’t Tamino’s point that they were indeed just following the published (?) algorithm for adjusting the non-rural stations with neighboring rural records? Weather or not it makes sense for this particular location (which does look suspect). Nobody has advocated a site-by-site approach to adjustments for ROW, have they?

BTW, this was my first visit to Tamino’s website…not impressive at all.

I posted a couple of comments on Tamino’s blog. Only one of them made it through moderation. Here is the first comment that was censored.

Tamino,
You write:
“Hansen (or anybody else at NASA) didn’t “simply assume” that a 3-degree error occured at Puerto Maldon. THAT’S WHAT THE DATA TELL US. ”
Not true. Hansen’s method of adjusting data to “nearby” rural stations is not without problems. For one thing “nearby” can be 1200 miles away and have a completely different regional climate. Different regional climates can have trend lines in opposite directions. Hansen’s method is not based on physical laws or common sense.

Also, your attack on McIntyre is nonsensical. The man has found numerous errors by leading climate scientists. Some of these errors have been admitted and some have not. But the fact McIntyre does good work is not doubted by anyone who understands statistics.

You really discredit yourself with your ad hominem attacks. You should try to stick to dealing with the data.

I lurked over last night for the first time to “Open Mind” (!!!???)and spent a half hour reading Tamino’s
posts about you and CA. Man! Some of the stuff he says about you is vicious and, as a lawyer, I can tell
you, is actionable. You have scared the crap out of these people.

Would it be possible to find a rural station with a cooling trend which has 2 nearby rural stations showing a warming trend? If it is found, then we can say that assuming that Puerto Maldon shows a cooling trend because of UIH is wrong, and if it is wrong, it shouldn’t be corrected. The same applies to any other stations.

Notice that there is no need that all of the rural stations surrounding the first one show a warming trend. It is enough if 2 of them show the warming trend, as we can’t know which trend would be shown by additional stations in the region of Puerto Maldon if they had existed.

This, of course, doesn’t prove any intention to bias the results in Puerto Maldon by Hansen or anyone. It is clear that they were just following the same procedure they use for the rest of the world. But what this would prove is that it is the wrong procedure, and that you cannot blame UIH for any difference in warming trends with maybe-not-so-nearby rural stations (mostly if you don’t even have enough confidence to clasify stations as rural or urban!)

There’s a difference between an audit or checking and doing a complete study. Checking to see if Hansen observe his own definition of “rural” by checking a few stations is something that would have been done had these been financial statements being sent out to the public, prior to them being sent out. We know that this wasn’t done by the peer reviewers of Hansen’s original article.

I agree I’ve done several ISO9100 audits myself, and I consider it being a dentist checking teeth:
“Did you brush properly? Then where does this cavity come from?” Auditing is simply checking (probing, time limits that you can’t do everything) if people adhere to standards they agreed to themselves. The auditor just reports if they don’t.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9000

Steve some of the commenter’s on Tamino had a good point. Are there some stations out there with the opposite problem than the stations featured here. Please don’t equate me with Tamino but I do find some of their( I say their because of his multiple pseudo names)post interesting, but I get regularly deleted..LOL.

I had about a dozen more photos than what I posted, showing all angles of the building, front and back, plus other long views of the airstrip. I looked for a Stevenson Screen, an ASOS, and a MMTS or Gill shield device. None can be located in the pictures I have.

There is this curious vertical concrete box/pillar to the right of the snack bar. Note it has a sloped roof, of corrugated siding, and some sort of front door.

It appears to be a crude facsimile of a Stevenson Screen, does it not? What else could it be and for what purpose?

Remember, most stations are placed for the convenience of the observer, and/or for aviation purposes. As my survey has shown so far, the stations well away from buildings are the exception.

Nothing surprises me anymore, so a concrete “Stevenson Screen”? Why not? Maybe we should send a letter to the airport manager there to ask for identification to be sure.

Back in the sixties, there was an extended correspondance in the New Scientist concerning Clockwise/Anti-clockwise whirlpool of bath water at the outflow. If I recall correctly it grew quite rancorous.
All nonsense, of course.
A.

RE66. I think I’ve identified the instrument. In the YouTube video labeled “airport” above we see an approaching walk towards the “pillar”. There is a cubicle built in and in a couple of still frames I paused, it appears to be a recording strip chart hygrothermometer. The white roll on the left side is the giveaway.

Or am I just seeing things? Help me out here.

This unit does dual duty, temperature and humidity.

These aren’t used much anymore, but I’m betting that’s what it is in the concrete pillar hole. It doesn’t look like this airport is at the high priority modernization list by the WMO, so it would not surprise me if this is it. NCDC has no equipment info in the MMS database.

You can keep those old strip chart units running a long time. The only consumables are paper and ink. When they can’t order more, I’ve seen people make their own strip paper from graph paper and wind it on the spool.

Why does this discovery matter? Alone, it doesn’t. But: it is part of a pattern of vanishing stations which have left some regions with very little coverage, have left others with no rural sites for “adjustment”, and all due to merely failing to keep up with the data.

Bear in mind that it’s not there to give an accurate record, it’s there so that the pilot knows the air density so that he can calculate whether he has enough runway to take off from! As a pilot air temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction are all I need, +/-1ºC isn’t going to worry me (I wouldn’t be that close to the margin anyway). With that airstrip a major consideration is if it’s been turned to a swamp by rain!
Check out below, see that damn great hill S of the airstrip?

Why does this discovery matter? Alone, it doesn’t. But: it is part of a pattern of vanishing stations which have left some regions with very little coverage, have left others with no rural sites for “adjustment”, and all due to merely failing to keep up with the data.

#79 Earle Williams:
Technically, the station is now *excluded* from the network.
The big question in my mind regarding this station, is why it is now excluded from the monthly GHCN dataset. What happened in 1989 to cause its exclusion? I’m hoping to look at the GHCN metadata for clues but have been very busy.

#80. The reason – as I’ve said MANY MANY times, is that GHCN has failed to update many stations for about 20 years – Dawson ends in 1990, Barbinsk, Russia ends in 1990, Cobija in 1989 – and their important customers – NASA, CRU,… have iether not noticed or not cared. It’s not an effect peculiar to Cobija; it’s a systemic problem.

Well, if we’re going to get technical/pedantic, the station is hardly excluded from the global network of GISTEMP. If that were the case there would be no reference to it in GISTEMP. Whether or not current data are excluded, the station remains in the network. I agree with Phil.’s point about it being good enough for the local aviators. My rhetorical question, and one that should be answerable by a robust global network, is what makes it good enough to be used to monitor global climate? I’m not saying it is or isn’t, but simply because it works for the local pilots does not necessarily mean it works for the rest of the world.

Steve some of the commenter’s on Tamino had a good point. Are there some stations out there with the opposite problem than the stations featured here.

Some commenters at all blogs, always make some good points. And yes, it may be there are stations with the opposite problem. If there are many with the opposite problem, then NASA GISS’s correction scheme may be simply adding noise, without adding bias.

Of course, adding noise to the signal is not a good thing either. Noise degrades data; it doesn’t improve it.

Whether NASA’s efforts improve or degrade the data, what’s being done with historic data is interesting. Seeing the photos of stations, the individual temperature traces and the magnitude of the corrections, gives us all some insight into the possible level of precision or accuracy of the GISS data product.

So, even though Tamino’s commenters may be correct when they suggest Hansen’s mistakes may not introduce a bias,that would still leave the question of introducing noise. And if it’s red noise, pink noise or blue noise, this would have serious consequences for empirical evaluations of climate models or other theories. (And of course, there is still the possibility that bias is introduced.)

You may very well be right. see below. Fenced in area surrounds the white “whatever” and it appears to be above ground, so looks like metal stand. Other objects in the fenced in area could be rain gauge and evapotranspiration pan. The fenced in area fits the general theme of weather stations I’ve seen around the world.

Here is a photo of one their automated weather stations, showing a fence.

Are there some stations out there with the opposite problem than the stations featured here.

I’m working on a post reviewing some of this. Hansen et al 1999 illustrated their adjustment using two sites where there were substantial positive UHI adjustments – Phoenix and Tokyo. They noted the existence of negative adjustments, but did not discuss any examples.

I notice that I’m being criticized at Tamino for picking some “bad” examples – well, Hansen already cited the “good” examples in the publication. One way of sorting through very large data sets is to look at extreme cases at both ends as it illuminates the process.

I’m being criticized for not assessing whether Hansen’s failure to observe his reported protocol “matters”. Well, up to a couple of days ago, I didn’t know that Hansen had used flawed meta-data in his classification of sites as “rural”. Tamino says that these flaws have been known at NASA for some time and that may be the case. But I was a bit surprised at just how flawed the meta-data was in a spot check.

Exacerbating the problem is the failure to update many of the rural series in the GISS/GHCN data set since about 1989-1990.

I’m doing some work trying to assess the impact – the issue has only been in play a couple of days. My hunch – and it’s no more than a hunch right now – is that the problem is not that the adjustment introduce an upward bias, but whether they are successful as an “urban” adjustments. If they fail as an adjustment for UHI, as seems increasingly likely, then what we are left with is a reference network of what increasingly appears to be “small town/city” sites. If that’s the case, then the claims to have allowed for UHI in the original article would be overstated.

AS I’ve discussed on many occasions, I think that it would be very desirable to identify the very BEST stations, wherever they occur in the world – BEST not just fight now, but with good metadata back through the 1930s at least, and build from there. I don’t exclude the possibility that the answer might be similar to received versions. But I do wonder whether some of the difference between the US and ROW histories relates to the different handling and metadata, as opposed to regionalized climate, and I would have thought that users of the data would welcome the fact that some scrutiny was being put on the dataset.

But I do wonder whether some of the difference between the US and ROW histories relates to the different handling and metadata, as opposed to regionalized climate, and I would have thought that users of the data would welcome the fact that some scrutiny was being put on the dataset.

Me, too. Condsidering the differences between the time/temperature curves for the USA and the ROW, the USA doesn’t seem to be teleconnected very well with the rest of the world.

I am sorry for sending a comment in that needed deleting. I am just anal about using good data since verifying data is how i made my money for the last few years. Sorry for making extra work for you steve to delete my comment. Keep up the good analysis.

Another thing to consider steve. If a site is Rural in 1980 ( less than 10K people) it is designated
RURAL post 1980.

A city Designated Urban, 100000 is Urban for all time.

So, a city that moves from a 1980 population of 9000, to a 2008 population of 20,000.
Will adjust a city of 100000 in 1980.

If, as Oke argued in 1973, the UHI effect is .73C*log10(pop). then a rural site moving from
5K people to 15K people will show a strong strend than a big city that moved from 100K to 110K
people. This would have the effect of a rural site having a warmer TREND than an urban site.
Especially if the reposnse to population is .73CLog10(pop)

Steve wasn’t trying to be critical just thought is was a good point and have not seen stations that are opposite. Do you think that the bias shown in GISS will tend to bias warmer when the trend is warming and cooler if the trend is cooling. What I mean is that it will bias more either way depending on the trend. Like recently when GISS shows a greater Delta T for January 2008. I think that all of the adjusting may put a lot of noise into the system because they adjust up, down or not at all and if you have error they can propagate to falsify the data. I hope that makes sense.

Have you considered keeping an open letter to the data agency with the known issues in it? I’m not talking about the techinical stuff like record splicing, but the true data inconsistencies, such as data that is available daily, but not monthly, sites with the wrong classification, etc. Then leave it open on the site and send the link to GISS or whomever. I think that would be a nice way to make an impact. The data folks can see all of the problems identified in one place instead of all over these different threads.

Perhaps one day we’ll all realize that arguing with or explaining things to um, the less swift, is probably almost always a waste of time, even if they’re really trying to learn something and not just stir things up….

RE101, Tamino is a very smart person, and has excellent math skills, much like our host, Mr. McIntyre. The difference however is in the social skills. Mr. McIntyre will gracefully concede error or mistakes but Mr. “Tamino” seems incapable of doing so and is hostile to anyone not in sync with his world view. I’ve also been at the end of that hostility several times.

One removes sophomoric comments from the blog, while the other leaves them and add some of his own.

Perhaps Tamino should join a squash or racquetball league.

My solution is to simply not visit anymore. As I see it: Vitriol=Irrelevancy.

Dr. Joanne Simpson has it right, in case you haven’t seen her extraordinary essay I have it here.

Olive branches are needed to move the science forward, that is, assuming the science is not settled.

I had a thought today, and that was that the issue of climate change has become tribal, and that entrenched factions operate much like warring tribes, hurling spears made of data, graphs, and algorithms.

“Some commenters at all blogs, always make some good points. And yes, it may be there are stations with the opposite problem. If there are many with the opposite problem, then NASA GISS’s correction scheme may be simply adding noise, without adding bias.”

I was looking at some of the Argentina stations, and I did see a couple of non rural stations where the temperature trend was actually decreased. But nothing like the magnitude of the trend increases that Steve saw in his stations.

I understand Steve McIntyre’s desire to send a little jab Tamino’s way now and then, but frankly this person gets much more attention here than he deserves. The reason he uses a pseudonym is pretty clear – he wants free license to vent his spleen toward anyone that disagrees with his Open Mind. My only wonder is why he picked the Tamino nym. Was BileFont taken?

Don’t waste time on this, we already know who he is, it was posted months ago on CA, and, why bother? What good is it once you know? Unless he says something actionable and damaging, the need isn’t there. But maybe it is according to comment 57.

One of the things I learned in the TV news business was that controversy generates interest. Tamino is doing just that. He’s hoping the vitriol will generate controversy and bring in visitors to absorb the information. But he’s missed a key ingredient, and I’ll leave that for him to discover on his own.

IMHO, the best defense is simply to ignore him until he learns how to be a gentleman. We all have that power to exercise.

I tried to think what might be common to these. I noted that quite a number of them are right here in my area, and are the test stations for USHCN2

One of them made absolutely no sense as to why it would have a record clipped.

Tejon Rancho, which is one of the oldest and most complete records in California. Same place, unchanged essentially in 100 years. Jim Goodridge, former California State Climatologist cites it as a “benchmark station”.

I also noted that many of these stations have significant microsite bias today. Wickenburg, Tucson, Reno, Lodi, Woodland(Maine, not Calif), Marysville, Lake Spaulding, Livermore, Healdsburg, Death Valley, and Red Bluff

Red Bluff is interesting, not USHCN, but often cited as one the hottest temp of the day in the USA until it converted to ASOS in early 90’s. The screen was right on the tarmac. I found the fellow that runs the air museum there and he pointed to the exact spot.

All these I noted have significant microsite issues in the present, but the records of the far past are the ones snipped.

It almost seems like a case of removing outliers for the time series. I remember something I saw recently about statistics, which I was researching thanks to another thrashing by Tamino. It said: “if you remove the outliers, your correlation will be better”.

In Australia we can type away while much of the ROW is asleep, so we get time to pester the host with irrelevancies.

The example above has been thoroughly researched for years and the conclusion is that microfeatures can occasionally bias flow in one direction or another in a given apparatus.

While we are about that region of the anatomy, see #20 Joe Black who asks –

Do they really know which end of a max-min thermometer should be up?

A question in return. Up what?

Seriously, I was and am worried about the ongoing use of data adjusted by dubious general methods. I asked our Bureau of Meteorology what happens with data from stations now so urbanised that they surely have UHI. Were these data still used, despite known deficiencies? Answer – we just generate the data. Once it leaves our hands we have no control over the uses to which it is put or by whom. This leads one to imagine that, despite the existence of and publicity given to recent high quality network attempts, a lot of poor information is still used either blindly or knowingly by those who know no better.

This is the classic von Braun rocket excuse: I just send them up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department, says Wehrner von Braun. (Tom Lehrer song, for the youngsters).

Re#108, I don’t think he’s just out to seek controversy. As someone recently put it, he’s “a nasty piece of work.” He seems to me to be the variety of person who seeks/needs to feel empowered. He has the complete freedom to speak his views (under his fake name, of course) on his site, mislead whenever he feels like it, and censor anyone who points out when he his amiss. There are folks out there who seem to think having a blog is their own fantasyworld to rule, and I put him in that category. Being a frothing AGW believer who uses the most vehement terminology and methods towards anyone who questions him, he gets to paint himself as the hero of Taminoland while conquering the evil McIntyre and denialists in the simulated battles on his blog.

I went and looked at what code remains after your image insertion attempts, ( only this /img> remains) and what is happening is that WordPress is removing it when published due to specific formatting requirements they have.

I suspect you are manually typing in HTML tags with your posts, am I right?

I stopped doing that long ago since WP eats them if not formatted the way it likes.

1. When you reply to this, look at the comments form. See the “Img” button between “Link” and “Close Tags” on the right?

2. Press it, if you have popup blocker enabled, clear it/enable it for this site, may have to press second time.

3. Then you get a form, paste the image URL in it (the image has to exist on a server somewhere, yours, flicker, NOAA, whatever and be public, bear in mind that some servers allow a browser to access within a web page, but won’t allow direct image link, you may have to test this.) then press OK

4. Then it will ask for description of the image, type in whatever you want, if lazy, just type “pix” but type in SOMETHING, then press OK

I called it GW Snow… it was there was so much moisture in the Atmosphere the snowflakes could grow bigger and bigger. They were so big. i was covered in snow within a minute.

RE the coldsnap deniers, they also point out extreme increase of snowfall. But isn’t that what’s predicted in a GW world? GW increases water vapor retention in the atmosphere, which comes down as severe precipitation events, ususally rain, but if the weather gets colder (in its usual seasonal and daily fluctuations between warmer and colder temps), that could mean extreme snow events.

I don’t have a private web site so I use public image handling companies. The one I tried, Photobucket, uploads my images ok then gives me 4 choices as to use (like simple URL, HTML, Use on Blog, Use on Bulletin Board). I get thru the Img part of WordPress ok, get the right box and paste the Photobucket line into it. But there must be some incompatibility. matbe wordpress needs a title for the image, that sort of thing.

Easy solution – you mention flicker as another supplier of image handling. I’ll give them a try. These’s just one fiddly step that I’m missing and I can’t find what it is from FAQs etc.

Other stuff – I’ve looked at the list of stations from steven mosher # 110. For Australia the changes merely lop off some very early years and I don’t have an argument with this. Mind you, I have not looked in detail at the data to see if it lops off inconvenient trends. Would that be worthwile to investigate?

The Hohenpeissenberg pattern with high temps at the end of 18th century is common for all Central European stations, and regardless of their urban or rural status. The city-center Klementinum is the same and it’s trend isn’t much different from the mountaintop (since 1906) Milesovka. I read that this is ascribed to oscillations between continental and Atlantic weather pattern, but don’t know if this explanation is still valid.

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